Yup! I'm not defending Obama, but it seems to be something lot's of politicians do: They create a problem, blame the guy before themselves for the problem, then they "fix" it. I'm no Bush fan, but it eats me up when the libs start blaming bush for all of Obama's failures. They keep saying "he inherited it". Let's see if they defend Trump next year (Assuming he beats The Cow) and say he "inherited" the Iranian nuclear crises from Obama.

It is true that Bush signed an agreement, known as the Status of Forces Agreement, on Dec. 14, 2008, that said: “All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011” under pressure from Maliki but it was supposed to leave a residual force of 40,000 troops. Maliki soon “reneged” and insisted on “the withdrawal of all U.S. forces by the end of 2011.”

Still, Obama had three years to negotiate a new agreement prior to the Dec. 31, 2011, withdrawal date to keep some U.S. troops in Iraq. In fact, a day before Bush signed the agreement, Gen. Ray Odierno — the former commander of the U.S. troops in Iraq and current Army chief of staff — said the agreement might be renegotiated depending on conditions on the ground. “Three years is a very long time,” Odierno told the New York Times.

Leon Panetta, who was Obama’s defense secretary from July 2011 to February 2013, wrote in his 2014 book, “Worthy Fights,” that as the deadline neared “it was clear to me — and many others — that withdrawing all our forces would endanger the fragile stability” in Iraq. As a result, the Obama administration sought to keep 5,000 to 10,000 U.S. combat troops in Iraq, as Sullivan said in his statement.

But negotiations with Iraq broke down in October 2011 over the issue of whether U.S. troops would be shielded from criminal prosecution by Iraqi authorities. Panetta wrote that Maliki insisted that a new agreement providing immunity to U.S. forces “would have to be submitted to the Iraqi parliament for its approval,” which Panetta said “made reaching agreement very difficult.”

Very difficult, but Panetta wrote it was not impossible saying that Obama did not press hard enough to reach a deal.

All this happened under Obama who, in order to keep a foolish campaign promise, withdrew without pushing for a residual force ... and ISIS is the result.

Yeah, that's what Wikipedia says. Others say they formed in 2004. But they really rose to power and prominence under Obama's administration.

Fast forward to the Arab Spring and the uprising against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. During the Iraq War, AQI (al Qaeda in Iraq) would frequently go back and forth between Syria and Iraq to resupply, so it had a lot of contacts in the country. When Assad began shooting and gassing his own people, the peaceful uprising turned into a civil war, elements within AQI saw an opportunity to establish a presence there.

It quickly moved into Syria, renamed themselves The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and merged with al Qaeda's Syrian counterpart. This pissed off al Qaeda's HQ, because they were already establishing a separate al Qaeda in Syria (aka al-Nusra front) and wanted it to remain separate. The two groups fought another mini-war amongst themselves and officially separated with AQI rebranding itself into the ISIS we hear about today.

Is that really President Obama's fault? Regardless of who is actually responsible for withdrawing from Iraq, the fact remains that the war was extremely unpopular in 2008 and 2009. Had President Obama decided to pull out all the stops and deploy all available American forces to Iraq and keep them there indefinitely, that would have cost him a lot of support here as well. Be candid here: what did you want to happen in Iraq in 2008? 2011? How about now, in 2016? How about next year, in 2017? 2021? 2025? Think carefully. Don't judge a President by his party.

Of course not. But when HIS OWN ADVISORS condemn his actions, it's hysterical to see the partisan hacks defending literally ANYTHING HE DOES. When you put a community organizer in the White House for no other reason than because of his race and his promises of "hope and change" this is what you get. FAILURE after FAILURE.

It would also help if the Obama administration didn't drop leaflets ahead of its ISIS bombing raids. But when your enemy uses civilians as human shields and you forget that the way wars have been won for 10,000 years is by killing the enemy combatants AND civilians, you get, once again, FAILURE after FAILURE.

LOL! Dealing with Lybia ... ISIS stronghold. Killing OBL hasn't changed much. "Denying Iran a nuclear weapon" ??? Really? He gave them $150 billion and let them run roughshod over him. Same for Cuba. He gave them everything they wanted. We got NOTHING in return.

Partisan hacks? Like me? Far from it. For example, I don't approve of the results he got by trying to arm the Free Syrian Army. We wasted a bunch of arms and ammunition that could very well have been used by the Iraqi army to fight the real enemyl, ISIS.

But let's be fair here. President Obama hasn't experienced failure after failure as you claim. For example, he announced in October 2015 that American troops would remain in Afghanistan indefinitely. I was never opposed to the War in Afghanistan for any reason, and it is important that we maintain a presence there until a democratic and free Afghan government can stay on its feet.

And of course, we all know about the successes President Obama has enjoyed in dealing with Libya, killing Osama bin Laden, denying the Iranians a nuclear weapon, and reopening relations with Cuba.

The fact that his strategy to fight ISIS has killed 27,000 enemy personnel, allowed local ground forces to recapture 30% of the enemy territory, only killed 400 civilians (compared to about a million for Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom), and only resulted in 3 American combat casualties.

I, personally, do not believe that utopia is possible because humans are simply imperfect. At the same time, I don't think that Americans are getting along with each other as well as they should. The key to fixing that is a mutual understanding, not stereotyping. Unfortunately, with an across-the-board failure of our public school system and the rise of sensationalist and anti-intellectualist political "journalism", this cannot happen.

Long story short: Go beyond what you see in the news. They stretch the truth to reach more people, but in doing so they create stereotypes, lies, and half-truths that form a barrier to mutual understanding.

They still have a large number of fighters and vehicles, but the war effort is making a lot of progress. Just the other day, the Iraqi ground forces started an offensive to retake Fallujah with support from American airstrikes.

Google "ISIS newspaper headlines". How come we aren't seeing headlines about ISIS being beaten? We only see headlines about them killing people. If they were truly as damaged as you say, we'd be hearing about it quite a bit more.

Even though ISIS has suffered enormous losses of personnel, vehicles, weapons, cash, oil, territory, and new recruits, they still have 20,000 personnel in Iraq and Syria; 6,500 in Libya; 7,000 in Nigeria; 1,000 in Afghanistan; 400 in Malaysia and the Philippines, and possibly a few dozen in the United States and Western Europe. They also have approximately 600 tanks captured from the Iraqi military, and at least 6 unmanned aircraft captured from Iraq, Syria, and other combatants. In essence, ISIS was huge to begin with and it will take time to destroy them. Rome was not built in a day, my friend.

Obama took office 8 years ago. From your stats, they started out with about 50000 people. How come 50000 people haven't been eradicated by several million people? America should take the lead and set out to squash ISIS. Other countries need to see that we want ISIS DESTROYED.

Because we haven't sent several million people. We've deployed 4,000 infantry personnel to Iraq for security duties and special operations, about 3,000 to Kuwait for security duties and special operations, 7,000 contractors to both countries together, and about 500 personnel to retrain the Iraqi Army. In order to prevent the deaths of a large number of ground troops like the last time, we're focusing on conducting airstrikes, training the Iraqi Army, providing security services, and participating in an occasional special forces raid. We're letting the Iraqis and Kurds do the groundwork. Another major ground war would not be popular here at home, especially if it were followed by another lengthy occupation.

In addition to the American ground forces, we've deployed dozens of naval vessels and hundreds of aircraft. These aircraft have since flown 44,000 sorties, a huge amount of activity by any measure. 11,000 airstrikes have been launched against ISIS, with 4 times as many being launched by American forces than by all the other Coalition partners put together.

Furthermore, President Obama did NOT take office 8 years ago. He took office 7 years ago, on Inauguration Day of 2009. Operation Inherent Resolve did not begin until June 5th 2014, so the war has been going on for less than 2 years. In that time, the military intervention against ISIS has reversed their advance, cut off their recruiting, destroyed 90% of their oil production (with Operation Tidal Wave II), killed enormous numbers of enemy combatants, retaken vast amounts of territory, and saved more civilians than it has killed.

In October 2014, US Central Command published a press release stating, "Tthe name INHERENT RESOLVE is intended to reflect the unwavering resolve and deep commitment of the U.S. and partner nations in the region and around the globe to eliminate the terrorist group ISIL and the threat they pose to Iraq, the region and the wider international community. It also symbolizes the willingness and dedication of coalition members to work closely with our friends in the region and apply all available dimensions of national power necessary - diplomatic, informational, military, economic - to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL." Other countries already see that we want ISIS destroyed. So now I dare you to find a problem with our military strategy.

"So now I dare you to find a problem with our military strategy."
ISIS ain't dead. When ISIS is at least 90% destroyed, I'll call it a decisive victory. Right now, they're still more than capable of atrocious acts.

The Benghazi incident took place in 2011. Operation Inherent Resolve did not begin until 2014. So far, we've only had 3 military personnel die from combat with the enemy over the course of Operation Inherent Resolve. We lost more than that in a single helicopter crash earlier this year.